Fitbit selected for NIH study

SAN FRANCISCO – Fitbit has been selected as the first wearable for use in the national All of Us research program established by the White House in 2015. All of Us seeks to enroll 1 million or more participants to accelerate research that may improve the ability to prevent and treat disease based on individual characteristics. Researchers will use data gathered from the program to learn more about how individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biological makeup can influence health and disease. The project is funded by an award from the National Institutes of Health to The Scripps Research Institute. As a subset of the All of Us program, the STSI leads The Participant Center, a unit tasked with enrolling and engaging diverse populations across the country. Through this network, STSI will provide up to 10,000 Fitbit devices to a representative sample of All of Us volunteers for a one-year study. At the end of the study, the researchers will provide recommendations on how the devices could be more broadly incorporated into the All of Us research program. The study will also generate a data set to explore the relationship between health indicators such as physical activity, heart rate and sleep in conjunction with other health outcomes that will be captured as part of All of Us. “As part of the global shift towards precision medicine, wearable data has the potential to inform highly personalized healthcare,” said Adam Pellegrini, General Manager of Fitbit Health Solutions, in a statement. “Through this historic initiative, we will be able to see the role that Fitbit data can play on the path to better understanding how individualization can help to prevent and treat disease.”